SELLER SAYS: My Ducati 848 Evo is for sale. It has just become too hard to ride with my ageing back and needs a new rider. It’s a pity if it just gathers dust in my garage. This machine has no scratches or marks and rides well as most Ducatis do. Engine is fine, battery maintained, has new Pirelli Super Corsa tyres and is equipped with Termignoni exhaust cans. Nothing to do to this machine except ride it away. Contact Ron on 0417 091 155 or ronvandenbosch@bigpond.com (Perth,WA) ref#200423
EDITOR TERLICK SAYS: When the world does a bunch more laps around the sun and we all look back on the petrol-motorbike era, many a vegan beer will be consumed around many a safe, virtual hologram camp fire, debating great motorcycles of the petrol era. If I’m at that safe, virtual hologram campfire, I’ll be casting a vote for the Ducati’s 848 Evo as one of the greatest. Yes, there is a lot of nostalgia associated with the 848 being a twin-cylinder sports bike, back when that was the only kind of sports bike that Ducati made. But even ignoring the wonderful two-cylinderness of the 848 it’s still one of history’s finest two-wheeled achievements, especially the up-spec Evo variant. Specification-sheet aficionados will tell you the Ducati 1098 of the same era boasted a bit better everything than the 848, but ask anyone who’s actually ridden both and you’ll discover most will give the 848 a higher love factor. Its 126hp engine is plenty fast, and the bike rides a bit sharper and lighter than the 1098. There’s a good short review on the Motorcycle News website (here) which describes the Evo as “a masterpiece”, “a class act” and “every bit as fast and exciting as a superbike, but a thousand times easier to ride”. It seems a bit loopy to be talking about a 13-year-old sports bike as a collectible, but we can see a lot of sense in snapping this one up and parking it in the games room. Lovely.
